07-04-2014, 01:14 AM
Hey, I enjoyed this so I'll jump straight to what I don't like.
You have set up some kind of convention within the poem as in:
"Occasionally, he..."
"Mostly, he..."
"Once, he..."
Generally I'm of the persuasion that if you're going to give a structure of sorts to a piece you better stick to it, use it to specific effect, or break it for specific effect. As it is, it really ruins the pacing for me because it's kind of hearing some kind of story, or more accurately, reading an instruction on how to set up 3g mobile with this new network, first, you send a text and get a link to install the date settings, then if it doesn't work you go to network settings, after which, you enter the port number and whatever you get the point. I feel like if you're going to set up 3 stanzas beginning like that but don't in the next, you better break the trend in style, and I think some interesting us of line breaking could've been enough.
In fact all you need is kind of there. "scooped and saved him by teacup drowning" is actually a line I quite liked. I think if you want to leave that line untouched another way is to pace up the 3 stanzas, have it get more intense or in depth or whatever stanza by stanza (stronger (or more passive? probably the former) imagery as stanzas go by, or shorter (or longer more breathless pauseless sentences) until it's broken by the fifth stanza. I think that'd actually do really well because it paces your piece in a way that keeps the reader's attention quite well. You have all the ingredients of a good poem but it does read a bit slowly and you could use this to good effect and make it so the fifth stanza as a kind of climax or like the ninth line of a sonnet, then end it all with the final stanza and giving the most impact.
I feel like basically you could play more with alternating the pacing and so on, use more linebreaks and also allowing more run on sentences for that effect. I would consider that the weakness of your poem, as I think the imagery and to the point. I'd also just nix the whole ending each stanza with a word thing, it doesn't really do anything for me, I mean it's almost natural for humans to seek structure for the sake of itself but I honestly think it's just distracting here. Of course I'm biased, I like free form poetry but there's my opinion.
Oh I also think the listing you did on the fourth stanza struck me as a bit meh, but I enough of it saved it for me. Like half of those words were strong, the other half not. I think you can figure which ones I mean by yourself, but exposure, clarity, gasping, all good, the rest aren't really things I can really grok.
Oh yeah I'm not even 100% sure changing from first person to third person (from that of a fish) is necessarily better, I kind of liked it that way. Like come, it's a metaphor. I think we have the capacity to imagine a person as an animal, we have enough disney films for that. STOP PRETENDING NEMO DIDN'T HAPPEN.
Also I don't like "flotsam jettisoned" it feels a bit forced and removed. The rest of the poem is quite organic.
Hope this helped.
edit: I'd definitely not hyphenate blind-sided either
You have set up some kind of convention within the poem as in:
"Occasionally, he..."
"Mostly, he..."
"Once, he..."
Generally I'm of the persuasion that if you're going to give a structure of sorts to a piece you better stick to it, use it to specific effect, or break it for specific effect. As it is, it really ruins the pacing for me because it's kind of hearing some kind of story, or more accurately, reading an instruction on how to set up 3g mobile with this new network, first, you send a text and get a link to install the date settings, then if it doesn't work you go to network settings, after which, you enter the port number and whatever you get the point. I feel like if you're going to set up 3 stanzas beginning like that but don't in the next, you better break the trend in style, and I think some interesting us of line breaking could've been enough.
In fact all you need is kind of there. "scooped and saved him by teacup drowning" is actually a line I quite liked. I think if you want to leave that line untouched another way is to pace up the 3 stanzas, have it get more intense or in depth or whatever stanza by stanza (stronger (or more passive? probably the former) imagery as stanzas go by, or shorter (or longer more breathless pauseless sentences) until it's broken by the fifth stanza. I think that'd actually do really well because it paces your piece in a way that keeps the reader's attention quite well. You have all the ingredients of a good poem but it does read a bit slowly and you could use this to good effect and make it so the fifth stanza as a kind of climax or like the ninth line of a sonnet, then end it all with the final stanza and giving the most impact.
I feel like basically you could play more with alternating the pacing and so on, use more linebreaks and also allowing more run on sentences for that effect. I would consider that the weakness of your poem, as I think the imagery and to the point. I'd also just nix the whole ending each stanza with a word thing, it doesn't really do anything for me, I mean it's almost natural for humans to seek structure for the sake of itself but I honestly think it's just distracting here. Of course I'm biased, I like free form poetry but there's my opinion.
Oh I also think the listing you did on the fourth stanza struck me as a bit meh, but I enough of it saved it for me. Like half of those words were strong, the other half not. I think you can figure which ones I mean by yourself, but exposure, clarity, gasping, all good, the rest aren't really things I can really grok.
Oh yeah I'm not even 100% sure changing from first person to third person (from that of a fish) is necessarily better, I kind of liked it that way. Like come, it's a metaphor. I think we have the capacity to imagine a person as an animal, we have enough disney films for that. STOP PRETENDING NEMO DIDN'T HAPPEN.
Also I don't like "flotsam jettisoned" it feels a bit forced and removed. The rest of the poem is quite organic.
Hope this helped.
edit: I'd definitely not hyphenate blind-sided either